I have had the Xperia Z for a couple of weeks now to test it. Lovely phone. Luckily I received one with the Sharp made screen which is the same as in the HTC Butterfly (it seems The Verge got one with a JDC screen which is inferior). It's very, very nice btw (clarity, sharpness, contrast are all best in class), it's just a shame that Sony didn't use this panel for all of them rather than going for two suppliers, one of which is clearly inferior. The camera could use a lot of work, but as seen by the recent discovery of the unprocessed burst mode pictures, there is clearly a lot of potential in the 13MP sensor so hopefully Sony can work something out. For the first week the battery life was poor, but now it is much better, I can get a full day of heavy use without a mid-day charge, and two days of light use.
Android 4.1.2 is better than 4.2.2, so I don't see it as a downside, I know Sony are going to update it very soon, but I would have preferred it if they skipped 4.2.2 completely and went to 5.0 ASAP instead of wasting time porting 4.2.2. I like the idea of PlayStation Mobile, but the execution is poor, hopefully Sony work on getting more developers on board this year and get more third party devices added to the ecosystem.
All-in-all an impressive device. Sony's best smartphone to date, and I can only hope that it is a sign of things to come in terms of design and power. There are just a few small niggles (most of which can be fixed with a software update) that stop this being a perfect device. If Sony can fix the camera so that normal shots look like those taken in burst mode the camera goes from a 7 to a 9, and supposedly 4.2.2 brings some battery life enhancement so that would push the battery score up also.
Easily the best phone released this year.
The Breakdown
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Design
10
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Display
9
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Camera(s)
7
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Reception / call quality
9
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Performance
9
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Software
9
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Battery life
8
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Ecosystem
9
Show the rest of this review and the breakdown
